[upbeat music] Historic homes of rich and prominent people hold a certain fascination.

They propel us back to a bygone era when wealthy families had maids and butlers.

When ladies gathered in the front parlor and men retired after dinner to the billiard room for a smoke.

In northwest Ohio, the early settlers lived in simple dwellings like log cabins.

But as the area began to prosper because of trade on the rivers and canals and through the gas and oil boom of the late 19th century, industries began to grow and people of means moved into the area.

Those who made their fortunes here or who moved here to make money wanted to show off their wealth And neighborhoods featuring grand homes sprang up from Toledo to Lima.

These old houses have stories to tell that go beyond the beauty and artistry infused in them by local craftsmen.

In this episode, we featured three homes the opulent Libbey house in Toledo, built in 1895 and the historic Old West End neighborhood, the MacDonnell House in Lima, built in 1893.

That was part of the golden block of beautiful Victorian era homes and the Oppenheim home in Cold Water.

A charming two story brick home in Mercer County.

Built in 1920.

[upbeat music] [piano music] The discovery of natural gas in Findlay in 1884 was also a boost to the local business community in Toledo.

In 1887, advertisements were placed in newspapers across the country, beckoning industries to take advantage of Toledo's location and the perfect fuel.

Edward Drummond Libby responded and relocated the New England Glass Company to Toledo in 1888 and renamed it Libbey Glass.

At that time, the old West End was one of the most fashionable residential districts in the city.

So it was no surprise when Libbey decided to build a new home for his wife, Florence Scott Libbey, that he chose to build among the other stately mansions in the West End.

Located on Scott Wood Avenue, the house was completed in 1895 and designed by well-known architect David Stein.

The 9000 square foot house was built to last.

The exterior is granite and shingle, with a 21 inch thick granite foundation.

The 18 room home also features a large wraparound veranda and a curved two story bay and the date 1895 highlighted on the South Side.

The exterior architecture is kind of a combination of Queen Anne and shingle, but it gives a very with the yellow Even though there's a granite foundation, it gives a very homey touch, but it's a very deep house, very long.

And so from the front door to the back of the home is is extensive, not typical to a Victorian home.

Victorian homes truly had smaller rooms.

It's just that this was kind of on the cusp.

1895 was really post Victorian, more into the Edwardian era, and this has more of a colonial revival feel inside.

[orchestral music] Florence Scott Libbey was the da of Maurice A. Scott and the granddaughter of Joseph Scott, a wealthy businessman who donated land for the University of Toledo.

She traveled extensively and was a lover of the arts, and the current owner of the home believes Mrs. Libbey's influence can be seen throughout the home, even today This is, to me, a woman's house.

It's not it's not feminine.

Exactly, but it just has a very as grand, as it is, It is.

It's still very much a wonderful home.

Janine and her husband, Skip Perkins, bought the Libbey home in 1993, and she says she fell in love the minute she walked in the door, because everywhere you could see into the dining room, the woodwork in the dining room, you could see the grand staircase, you could see pillars.

You could see just the vistas that and no matter where you stand in certain areas of the house, you get just beautiful views of From a different perspective.

The living room features a hand-carved mahogany fireplace, one of five throughout the house.

[orchestral music] And to the left is a mahogany bookcase with leaded glass.

[orchestral music] The Ornately panel dining room, a favorite of most visitors features hand-carved oak woodwork throughout the room.

[piano music] There are ten hand-carved lion heads, six above the fireplace, each with its own personality.

[piano music] The dining room fireplace is a showpiece in itself.

The Delft tiles that surround it were imported from the Netherlands, and no two scenes are alike.

To the left of the fireplace.

There is a hidden built in safe.

But we've shown the safe so many times to people on tours.

It's no longer a secret.

Although the dining room has many hidden treasures, Janine says the grand staircase area is her personal favorite.

Because of the stained glass window and the colors in the stained glass window and the fact that it's light and airy and you can see through it.

It's not real dark and heavy and intense.

It's just a beautiful, well-lit area.

And because the French Casement Bay.

The Casement Bay Window is a European influenced architectural feature, often used by royalty to look out onto courtyards.

The second floor features another grand center hallway and a marble hearth fireplace.

[harp music] There are five bedrooms on the second floor and the large master bedroom features yet another mahogany fireplace.

It's been a very gradual process.

And we didn't have unlimited resources where we could just go out and buy every antique that we desired.

So we just, you know, bought a piece here and a piece there.

And it's very eclectic, but it's still to us, what was important was to keep it at home.

We did not want to turn it into a museum.

We felt that, you know, we were going to live here, we were going to use it.

And so we wanted to keep it very much a home also.

[orchestral music] A cherry wood back staircase leads to the third floor, which was once servant's quarters.

I believe on record they had three live in servants and the third floor is very large and there are 4 to 5 rooms that could be bedrooms on the third floor, one of which is designated as a trunk room.

Now, obviously, they were wealth and so they had more belongings but this home has 14 walk in or 14 closets.

Nine of them are walk in closets and even up on the third floor.

And most of the walk in closets have built ins in them, dressers and drawers.

So that's amazing to me that in 1895, they felt they had the need for that many closets and that many walk in closets.

Janine says the third floor is a testament to the Libbey's generosity because these are some of the nicest servants quarters in the whole West End from a third floor window.

There's a perfect view of the Toledo Museum of Art.

Mr. and Mrs. Libbey founded the museum and left a major endowment that's been used to purchase much of the artwork inside.

She actually traveled quite a lot before she even knew Mr. Libbey because she had a very strong appreciation for art.

Her family was used to giving back to the community and so they donated the property that the museum sits on now for the art museum.

But I always felt like Mrs. Libby and I were like felt like kindred spirits because of the house, the connection with the house only not.

I mean, she obviously was very wealthy and very generous.

And I feel like she would be just happy with the house today as she was at the turn of the last century I've never felt any kind of bad anything here.

It's all warmth and it all feels good in here.

[orchestral music] [cheerful music] In Lima, it was the discovery of oil that fueled the growth of the city in the late 1800s after oil was discovered in 1885.

Lima became the pipeline's center of the Midwest.

The Lima oil field stretched across west central Ohio, past Grand Lake, St Mary to Indiana.

And for a time, it was the largest in the nation.

This ushered in the largest period of growth for the city and brought wealth and prosperity to the region.

Grand Victorian era homes were built on what became known as the Golden BLOCK, just west of downtown on Market Street.

These opulent homes have disappeared over the years and only a few vestiges of this time period remain, including the MacDonell House on West Market Street.

The house was built by Frank Banta in 1893 after he moved to Lima from Troy and started a grocery business that grew into B.J.

Banta Gum and Candy Factory.

The 17 room home is an example of Victorian shingle style architecture and was considered one of the finest homes in the city.

Designed by architect Frank N. Leach, using ideas that Banta liked from a home in Toledo, it was said to have cost more than $20,000 to build.

But then in 1887, Banta wanted a new home.

So he worked out a deal with a friend and swapped houses with John Van Dike, who lived in another house on Marcus Street .

Van Dike worked for John Dee Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Company and came to Lima to operate the solar refinery.

Mr. Van Dike lived here from 1887 until 1903, when John de Rockefeller called him a way to start another refinery.

And then the house sat empty for about 12 years, and it became known as kind of a mystery house.

The MacDonell family lived in the house from 1932 to 1957.

Elizabeth McDonnell purchased the house in 1932.

She was a widow, having lost her husband in World War Two.

She was also a prominent civic and cultural leader in the Lima community and a founder of the Allen County Historical Society.

Elizabeth MacDonell bought the property.

It then became her sons, her son James MacDonald, and his wife Ellen.

Lived here after after her death in 1942.

And they raised their their family here, their daughters.

And Mr. MacDonnell moved his family, I believe, in 1957 to another house in Lima, and then very generously gave the house to the Historical Society in 1960.

[piano music] The carpeting and wallpaper have been updated, but the woodwork is original and the house has been furnished in antiques.

The house is enhanced by beautiful parquet floors and leaded glass windows and doors.

The Front and second parlor are still intact as two separate rooms and throughout there is ornate quarter sawed oak, cherry and mahogany hand-carved woodwork.

[orchestral music] The formal dining room features.

As an original light fixture.

It was wired for electricity and also piped for gas.

At the time the house was built, there was still a toss up as to which was more reliable.

So this and other light fixtures in the house were made to work both ways.

And the front entrance way.

One side of this pillar is cherry wood and the other side is oak, so as to match the other wood in each room.

In the entryway is a wooden desk and it was there very few of those existing today, but those are very popular among business people.

And they were calling it an office in a desk because of the many compartments and.

They could be closed and locked at night.

Of course, the one aspect of the house that gets noticed right away is the stained glass window, especially if it's if it's a bright, sunny day that that stands out very prominently is three layers jackets.

It's they don't know who the artist is.

We tried to find that out and have been unsuccessful.

Upstairs.

The view down the center hallway reveals the depth of the house.

It's 78 feet long and 43 feet wide.

[string music] The rear portion of the house, including the kitchen and the upstairs sleeping porch, were added by John Van Dike when he resided here in 1897.

And Van Dike also renovated the third floor, changing it from a billiards room to a grand ballroom.

And a local newspaper reported after the ballroom was complete quote, The residents became the scene of some of the most brilliant social functions in the history of the city.

[ballroom music] This is the opulent block of the of the in the whole city.

Lima was booming not just from the oil.

Industry But we have.

The transportation industry here like so.

We had five major railroads running through Lima plus Electric Street railroads.

And that brought a lot of industry.

And so there was just just.

It was a it was a period of wealth and prosperity in Lima.

[guitar music] When I was a kid.

I don't even know how old I was.

Maybe 12 years old.

13.

Rode my bike over to Cold Water with a good friend.

And when we were riding around this town, it was like we came down the street and we were just like looking at the houses and, you know, all of a sudden I saw this house and I thought, oh, my gosh, I was just like, look at that house.

Is that not the most beautiful home?

And I just said, Oh, man, could you just imagine living in a house like that?

And so it was kind of like a dream.

Wendy Schwieterman was the teenager riding through town from neighboring Salina.

She had no idea that the Oppenheim family lived here And little did she know that an invention that made it easier for farmers to fertilize their crops with manure created the fortune that made this house possible in 1899.

Joseph Oppenheim Senior was a teacher, and Maria Stein, a small agricultural community in Southern Mercer County.

After watching his neighbors struggle with the messy, dirty task of spreading manure to fertilize their crops, Joe came up with an idea to build a machine to make the job easier.

After a few setbacks, the company became a huge success.

And in 1910, the Oppenheim family moved the business to Coldwater, Ohio to be near railroad lines and to expand to a bigger facility.

The New Idea Company became a nationally recognized producer of farm equipment.

All of the Oppenheim boys helped run the company, and it was Joe Junior who decided to build this beautiful home just about a block away from the New Idea factory in Cold Water.

The two story brick home has 4472 square feet of living space.

Beautiful red trim, a red tile roof, copper gutters and downspouts and a drive thru portico.

We finished the home in 1920.

In 1937, they put an addition which would have been right abov us where we're sitting here.

And they made an area of the home that was really wasn't used much, I don't believe, until that time they started having children.

So they put a maid's quarters up, which before that was just some office space or whatever they used it for.

Matt Schwieterman grew up just a few doors away from the Oppenheim home, and he has fond memories of Joe and his wife and.

They did a lot for the community and.

I you know, all I thought was good about them.

They were very well thought of.

I delivered newspapers here and and in the wintertime, it was always get a cup of hot chocolate from Mrs. Oppenheim and Mr. Oppenheim.

RIDEAU Would you know, he'd pay me my $0.35 for the week on paper.

But they were very, very nice people.

They had a fellow that took care of the grounds and.

And they had irrigation here.

That was very unusual back in the fifties and that you just didn't see irrigation for the homes around here.

I remember after.

The next door neighbor, his mother.

Clean here.

Everyone thought he'd come over and have me.

He'd say, Matt, he said, That's Mom's.

Clean it on the second floor over there.

The Oppenheim dream vacation.

Maybe we can sneak down and play pool.

So we sneak down the basement and play pool for a few minutes until.

Till his mom heard the pool balls rolling there that had shot that kid out the door we go.

Although he grew up on this street, Matt never imagined he'd ever live here.

That is, until he met and married his second wife, Dee.

Matt and I were driving around after we were married and he was showing me where he grew up and he showed me the house that he grew up in.

And I said, Wow, that's a really neat house.

And I was just looking at it and I said, you know, maybe we'll go through that sometime.

And then I was keeping my head turned that way as we were going down the street and three more houses down.

You know, I see this house and I'm like going, Oh, my gosh, that's that house.

It's like I went, Oh, my Lord.

I said, If that house ever goes up for sale, can we just go through it?

I just want to see it.

When we first looked at it, my wife loved bigger, older homes.

And I'm thinking, I grew up in a big old home and I don't want a big, old home.

But she changed my mind.

What really sold him on it?

We I probably it probably was a whole year before we actually got serious about it.

And he decided that we would go to a Home-o-rama in Indianapolis and we went through some million dollar plus homes over there and they were just gorgeous.

But I said, since we can't build one.

I said, you know, we can actually buy a house that's better built than these homes and.

A house that you couldn't replace for that amount of money.

And I can make it look like these houses.

It's obvious that Dee kept her promise.

The four year old.

The home has beautifully carved woodwork, high ceilings and an open stairway.

[happy music] To the right is a magnificent living room with a crystal chandelier that was imported from France.

[happy music] And an Italian marble wood burning fireplace.

[happy music] Off living room through elegant French doors is the garden room.

I love this room.

It's so open and airy and it feels good.

It's just a good room to come and sit.

And I like to read out here sometimes.

Have a cup of tea in the morning.

Just because I like to sit and relax a little bit.

The phone of some.

It's a steam heat.

That's some.

That's the most.

I know economically, but it's the most.

There's no drafts there.

Just absolutely no drafts.

It's so warm.

And I like the airy feeling about it.

You come in and from the outside it looks a little dark but you come inside or just windows everywhere and it's so light, so fresh and airy, and it's in the winter time, you just don't you don't hear the wind.

It's so tight.

It's such a tight home for an old home.

[happy music] There's an antique mirror at the entrance to the dining room that belonged to the Oppenheim family.

And the dining room with gorgeous wall tapestry has another Italian marble fireplace.

[happy music] A butler's pantry and a half bath.

Lead to the kitchen.

[happy music] And the cook's pantry at the kitchen has a special feature steps the pullout to reach the upper cabinets.

[happy music] A lot of people refer to it as a mantra, and I don't really think of it as a mansion now that I'm living in it.

It's it's just a beautiful home, but it's kind of like I've always loved old houses.

I just have something about me that just is drawn to old houses.

And I love quality.

I love beautiful things.

I mean, my daughter says that's why I'm always trying to redo everything, you know, because I see the beauty in everything, and I'm always trying to make it better or restore it.

There are six bedrooms upstairs, three in the front area, and three others in the back section that used to be the maid's quarters.

[happy music] This has a very it's a high ceiling basement, which was very unusual for that time.

Older homes, just the older home we lived in, like we have about a six foot two or six foot four ceiling.

That's about eight or nine foot in some places.

So that's very unusual.

The basement also has a wet bar, yet another fireplace and an English round top door.

The pool table and many of the balls are the same ones used by the Oppenheim family when they resided here.

I still have days where I'll come down and I just look around and the sun shining in the windows and it's just so peaceful and pretty.

And I think, God, I'm lucky to live here, you know?

[happy music] [upbet outro music]